The hard core SOF team, Zabitosky, Coyne and Tom Reisinger, a former SF medic, all of them seasoned Nam vets and familiar with the smoggy, over-populated city of Bangkok which had been a popular playground for those on R&R during the war, knocked around the old familiar city for days.
Bangkok, like many other Southeast Asian cities, was a melting pot for Chinese, Indians and other nationalities. It very much had a European influence, although Thailand had escaped European colonialism. Thailand had become a neutral playing field with seaside resorts and cosmopolitan shopping districts that catered to worldly tourists and other fat cats. East met West in Bangkok, where hit men, gold, drug and weapons traffickers and other nefarious characters met and plotted. The streets were lined with small ethnic shops and upscale designer boutiques. Fashionable men and women drove or shoved each other through the streets or were driven in rickety carts pedaled by humans in baggy pants and sandals. The smell of roasting coffee and chickens hanging in the marketplaces, rotting, mixed with the scents of exotic spices and freshly cooked hot Thai cuisine floating out from the many restaurants that lined the streets and backed up into alleyways. Thailand was the “Land of Smiles,” not counting the periodic palace coups by the military, and the Thais were outwardly quiet and gentle. That reputation is all well and good as long as you’d never dealt with them, and even then learned to watch your back.
Whether in smoky bars on the infamous Pat Pong Street in Bangkok, where for many years clandestine legitimate and illicit rendezvous and plans had been hatched, at the Bangkok Foreign Press Club, or through the “old boy” network, the SOF team established contacts. Some of those included U.S. Embassy officials and various indigenous personnel. Others were Americans in the expat community in Thailand up to one shenanigan or another.
Having gotten as much as they could of the POW scoop in Bangkok, the SOF team slipped up north toward the Laotian border to meet up with Vang Pao’s contacts. They reported to home base after getting a feel for the lay of the land and for the dicey political situation that had changed considerably in the decade since the war had ended.
“Brown, this mission is not going to go far unless we have a launching pad in Laos, right across from the Thai border in the north. From there, we can conduct training of local Lao United Liberation Front (LULF) troops. Recon teams and intelligence agents could infiltrate Laos to search for U.S. POW/MIAs or provide security if a cash-for-POWs plan came through,” they told me.
“What about crossing the Thai-Laotian border?” I asked.
Coyne said, “No country likes folks crisscrossing its border without so much as a greeting to immigration control and customs. But there are places in the world where governments can’t do much about it. Laos and along the Mekong River are obviously one of those places.
“We’ve laid contingency plans to make a wild dash back into Thailand from Laos and a quick lawyering-up in case hostile Americans or Thai officials pursue us. Just imagine vastly outnumbered Thai border security forces and their Kuomintang Chinese irregulars trading fire with totally pissed-off Vietnamese and/or Pathet Lao chasing after our “round eye” scalps. Large-scale hostilities heating up between the two Southeast Asian rivals would put the names of SOFers at the top of the American Embassy’s bad guy list. Or worse yet, we could end up in some rat infested Thai or Lao slam, or spend a few seconds against a cold concrete wall facing a firing squad.” The team, concerned about our shifting Thai and American “allies,” sounded the alarm regarding the shaky political landscape.
I gave their fears due thought—for a couple of seconds. After all, the two tall, blue eyed, English-only-speaking Vikings who towered over the natives, TR and Coyne, and the mean and tough-looking, dagger-eyed Zabitosky, conducting all sorts of irregular activities made a very visible target among the smaller even more dark-complexioned locals.
“Continue to march,” I said. “Build the bloody camp. I’ll finance it myself.”
The Thai officials, who played their cards close to their vests, never openly approved of our highly trafficked safe house in Chiang Mai or our trekking across their border with arms and supplies; but they did not stop us either. That is, until five months later when, out of the blue, they ordered us to shut our operation down.
The intervening five months, until we were ordered to shut down the site, were some of the most eventful in the magazine’s history. One bizarre event after the other kept our heads spinning. We found ourselves so en-trenched in other projects that we kept on operating in Thailand for the next two years. We recruited 125 armed ethnic tribesmen to man the camp we established and called “Liberty City” (FOB ‘81), the only permanent anti-communist installation in Laos in the early ‘80s.
Now some good intentions are just that, while others cost a bundle, and this one almost sucked me dry. I doled out at least $250,000 (probably $680,000 in today’s currency) from SOFcoffers to fund the command center in Laos and other POW/MIA related projects. The various cunning actors whose support I needed demanded that we operate on several fronts before they would cooperate.
Remember, to get General Vang Pao on board, we had to produce a sample of Yellow Rain, a chemical warfare agent allegedly being used against the Hmong. His second condition was to train a local hostage rescue force. We were strong-armed by a former CIA agent in Thailand into helping support a Laotian revolutionary movement in exchange for a hoped-for recovery of American prisoners. But it got better. We planned to take down an opium lab.
I dished out over $72,000 alone just to William Young, the American mastermind of a Laotian Resistance revolution plot, a clever former CIA operative and a man of great intrigue. Little did I know that he was a Lahu tribesman in a white man’s body. Skilled in the Thai/Lao way, he used bribes, cut underhanded deals, and, knowing just how to trigger my lust for adventure, kept me hanging on with fantastic plots so he could keep the purse strings open. But as you will soon see, he wasn’t the only villain. Thailand and Laos were full of them, both native and Western. I admit that I was completely seduced by the adrenalin-raising adventures and missions impossible. But first let me get to the search for Yellow Rain, the first hoop we had to jump through in order to meet General Vang Pao’s bargaining conditions.
13
YELLOW DEATH IN LAOS
At the same time that plans were being laid for Liberty City, in an ongoing saga that lasted half a year, we had gone in search of samples of Yellow Rain.
On 4 May, soon after arriving in Thailand, the SOF team went to Laos to visit a refugee camp. Through General Vang Pao’s contacts, they were introduced to and interviewed individuals who claimed that they had suf-fered from Vietnamese attacks of Yellow Rain. There they hit pay dirt.
“We happened on Soua Lee Vang by chance, while gathering background for a story on the state of the Lao resistance, and asked about refugee reports of the use of gas. “Absolutely! Would you like to talk to a man who has just come out of one of the gassed areas inside Laos?” our contact asked.
“But of course!” Coyne said.
The following story that Soua Lee Vang told SOF, if true, would confirm our worst fears.
An old biplane, flying high and slow, approached the village on Ban Paa Ngum mountaintop. Without warning, in one loud, low pass over the village the previous October, a wide trail of yellow mist poured from the wings and whipped into the slipstream, then fell quietly over the village center. Villagers, including Soua Lee Vang, convulsed coughing until they collapsed from severe abdominal cramps and spasms, many dying horribly in their own blood and voided bowels. They bled from their eyes and ears, and profusely from the nose and mouth. Men, women, children and animals died one by one, and the only sounds were of weeping and the brush of wind on the yellow covered leaves.
With the aid of an old Department of Defense escape-and-evasion map of Laos that our source had stashed with his few belongings from “the old days,” he began the trek toward Thailand. He meticulously noted the coordinates of the attack on Ban Paa N
gum, including date, time, type of aircraft, direction and results: 21 people dead, approximately 500 people critically ill with vomiting and bloody stools, approximately 400 people with skin disease, blisters or spreading infections.
Then, on 2 April 1981, he witnessed another attack, this time on the village of Ban Thong Hak. A MiG-17 appeared suddenly out of the sun to the northwest and dropped its lethal cargo of chemicals on the defenseless Hmong men, women and children: a brownish cloud in which Soua Lee Vang believed 24 people died horribly, and 47 became desperately ill.
With the chemical sample wrapped in plastic and tape, he reached the Ban Vanai Refugee Center in Thailand, six grueling days later.
At least five similar gassings occurred since the previous October in the areas he had been in. Hundreds, even thousands, had died. Soldier of Fortune had heard rumors for some time that the Soviets, and their client states, had been routinely and systematically employing chemical, and possibly biological, weapons in Laos, Afghanistan and Cambodia, but had been unable to prove it. The agent or agents used were unknown and elusive, and gassings always occurred deep within hostile, virtually inaccessible areas, far from inquisitive observers. The evidence itself seemed to just disappear. All that remained were the results, the accounts from survivors, and blank abandoned areas on the maps.
“Would you like a sample of the chemical?” Soua Lee Vang’s words hit us like a sledgehammer.
“Yes, we damn well would like a sample.”
Soua Lee Vang soon returned with the small, well-wrapped parcel he had carried so long and so far.
We held back our enthusiasm lest we end up with mud on our face. We had heard from reliable sources that one major Laotian charlatan, General Phoumi Nosavan, who headed U.S.-backed anti-communist military forces in the ‘60’s, had sold Australian ABC-TV what was purported to be a canister of Yellow Rain for $10,000. It looked like a RPG round painted yellow. When the TV station purchased the canister and it was taken to Australia for evaluation, it was found to be an RPG round painted yellow. No Yellow Rain.
All we needed was to be suckered in with a bogus sample. ABC was painted as a victim, whereas SOF, already on top of the media outlaw list, would become a liberal laughing stock.
Within 48 hours, Bleacher flew the sample, concealed in a toothpaste tube, to the United States to have it tested in a private laboratory. We were suspicious that an official government agency might not provide an honest analysis, as some government personnel might object to giving SOF credit for the find.
A MAJOR COUP FOR SOF!
The private lab proved to be useless, giving us negative results for the sample. We turned the remaining residue over to Congressman Jim Leach’s (R-Iowa) office through a third party, who in turn gave it to the appropriate U.S. laboratory where it was analyzed and found to contain a deadly myco-toxin.
When he was in West Berlin, Secretary of State Alexander Haig declared that for the first time the United States “had definite evidence” of the use of chemical weapons in Laos, Afghanistan and Cambodia, which were manufactured by the Soviet Union, one of which was provided by Soldier of Fortune magazine.
In November 1981, SOF staffer Jim Coyne went on the talk show circuit and testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee regarding the Yellow Rain issue. SOF itself exposed the use of chemical and biological warfare in March ‘82 in an article called Yellow Rain. Dismissing the State Department’s confirmation that they had obtained four samples, one from SOF, the New York Times criticized the State Department in an article, “Too Quick on Yellow Rain.” We figured the NYT was just miffed because their reporters were not part of the story. But the people of Laos were suffering and dying for such lack of concern.
At this time, Soldier of Fortune magazine offered a $100,000 reward to the first communist pilot to defect to the West in an aircraft with intact samples of Soviet chemical or biological warfare agents. Unfortunately, there were no takers.
We were certain that the use of chemical and biological agents by the Soviet Union and its satellites was an integral part of their strategy and tactics. They would, without hesitation, poison Cambodian refugee-camp water wells inside Thailand, or spray lethal chemicals on Laotian villages, or gas an Afghan town. Fortunately, for reasons unknown, this did not happen.
14
POWs ON OUR MIND
At the while we were on the hunt for Yellow Rain, we were on the lookout for POW’s.
The anything goes Bangkok bars, where anyone could buy almost anything, were the favorite hangouts and the most likely places to find expats. A seedy bar did not let us down this time either, when we met the contact who was to open doors for us. Zabitosky, on the prowl for local bimbos, was in a smoky bar in Bangkok one night when an American Indian, Rob (“Mingo,” aka “Crazy Horse”) Applegate, a former Air Force sergeant who had spent much of the previous year in northeast Thailand, a few kilometers from the Thai border, approached him.
“I hear you are searching for POWs,” said Mingo, tall, swarthy and who, with sharp Indian features, never did mince words. This gung-ho, if off-center loner and self-styled soldier-for-hire later smashed a flower vase against Zabitosky’s skull during one of what was to become too many brawls between SOF members at our Chiang Rai safehouse, or penthouse, in Bangkok.
As Coyne put it, “The Indian Mingo was a crazy mother. At one point he knocked Zabitosky into the fireplace when he came down from Liberty City and wanted to know where all the food and gear they were promised was. Zabitosky was, well, feeling no pain at the time and was with a young waitress he had brought home. Apparently his answers did not satisfy Crazy Horse. I just remember thinking, ‘Holy Cow, this is one tough SOB. He just punched a Congressional Medal of Honor recipient into the flaming hot fireplace!’“
“A U.S. embassy official in Thailand gave me information that live POW sightings have been made both in Bangkok and up north in Chiang Rai,” Mingo claimed in that smoky bar. “The U.S. government won’t pay for the information. But my Lao contacts will love to give you the information if you are willing to help them.”
“Help” and “love” in Thai, or Vietnamese for that matter, as we had learned during the war in Nam, translates into “Pay dollars, Sucker.”
So that is how we recruited “Mountain Man” Mingo Applegate and his cohorts, Messrs. Buni and Tor, who provided intros to the two alleged eyewitnesses to the target, the Muong Sai POW camp supposedly containing American POW’s.
A few days later, Zabitosky, Mingo and Coyne flew to Chiang Rai in northeastern Thailand to meet up with Mingo’s resistance contacts. After checking into the Wiang Inn Hotel, the SOFers were introduced to a Mr. “T,” who represented himself as the Chief of Staff of the Lao United Liberation Front (LULF), and a Mr. “B,” his deputy. “T” headed up the medical section of a refugee camp and “B” was employed as an instructor in a secondary school in Chiang Rai.
“T” claimed that there was overwhelming evidence of a POW/MIA presence. Coincidentally, two recently released prisoners of a communist re-education camp at Muong Sai, Laos, had returned to Thailand where, through the grapevine, they related stories of seeing Caucasian prisoners during their respective confinements.
The team interviewed the two informants on the spot: a Hmong we referred to as “LP,” and a Lao, “TS.” Their separate accounts were amazingly similar in regard to the information concerning the camp layout.
The Lao claimed that while being taken to a building for interrogation, he saw two roundeyes, both in their late 30s, being escorted to another building within the compound. The Hmong sightings involved two Americans working on an aircraft on the adjoining airstrip. Neither, however, was able to give any clues as to the identities of the Caucasians.
DATE OF INTERVIEW:
16 June 1981; Name: “LP”—a Hmong; Age: 32
“I was taken to Muong Sai on 30 March 1981 where I stayed for 21 days until about the 24th of April. I had been charged with murder of a village headman and was arrested
with two others. I am headman of the Hmong resistance and was born in the village of Sang Num Om in Laos.
“Pathet Lao troops accompanied me to Muong Sai. We were awakened at 0600 hours each morning and then cleaned our room. There were about 20 others with me.
“On or about 9 April, I saw two Americans. The first was tall with a beard and less than 50 years of age. He wore dark pants and shirt but had no shoes or hat. The second man was shorter and heavier with no beard. Again, he wore dark pants and shirt and had no shoes or hat.
“Both men were guarded by two Pathet Lao soldiers armed with AK-47s. I was about 10 feet away from the Americans as they walked by on their way out of the camp.
“I was told by friends that more than 20 Americans are held prisoners at Muong Sai along with at least one Thai prisoner.
“The camp where Americans are kept may be called Nado or Nadoo which is known to be a large jail for criminals and high-ranking enemy officers.”
DATE OF INTERVIEW:
16 June 1981 ; Name: “TS”—a Lao; Age: 3
“I was a prisoner in Muong Sai until six months ago. During 1972—73, I worked in Laos under General Vang Pao at his headquarters at Long Tieng. The Pathet Lao felt I needed to be re-educated so they sent me to the prison for five years from 1975 until January 1, 1981. My job was to cut wood. I was released because I had finished the re-indoctrination program.
“On December 26, 1980, I saw two Americans sitting in a truck with about seven Laotian soldiers also in the truck. They were on the way to the airfield where the Americans worked on planes.
I Am Soldier of Fortune Page 17